


In Which Stiles Gets An Update And It's Full Of Bugs

by TheCurat0r



Category: Deadpool (2016), Deadpool (Movieverse), Teen Wolf (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Canon Divergence - Post Teen Wolf Season 3b, Implied/Referenced Torture, Inappropriate Humor, M/M, Mutation, Partial Mind Control, Post-Nogitsune Stiles Stilinski, Psychological Torture, Stiles Stilinski Has Frontotemporal Dementia, Suggestive Themes, the Recruiter Finds Stiles
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-12-28
Updated: 2019-12-28
Packaged: 2021-02-25 23:20:46
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,072
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21993631
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TheCurat0r/pseuds/TheCurat0r
Summary: Stiles discovers that the Frontotemporal Dementia was not a trick. The Recruiter offers him the Superhero deal like Wade and, like Wade, he's desperate enough to take it.
Relationships: Stiles Stilinski/Wade Wilson
Comments: 20
Kudos: 129





	In Which Stiles Gets An Update And It's Full Of Bugs

**Author's Note:**

> IMPORTANT: Almost all of the physical torture is implied or offscreen and on par with what happened in the movie. The psychological torture is implied up until the introduction of the character, Earwig. This is also where more visible torture takes place, though relatively brief. Read with care.

The Nogitsune, it turns out, had one more trick up its sleeve and it was, perhaps, its greatest.

After all, what could be worse than the truth?

…

_"It's called Frontotemporal Dementia. Areas of your brain start to shrink... It's what my mother had."_

...

A sleek man offers his card with a practiced hand.

"This doesn't have to be the end, Mr. Stilinski."

Stiles imagines ripping up that card and allowing Scott's fangs to sink deep into his flesh, to maybe, just maybe, make him one of them.

Unless it leaves him coughing up black tar, spending his last moments watching Scott return to the defeated mindset that thought holding a lit flare in a pool of gasoline was a good idea.

Stiles clenches the card in his hand even as he hurls an insult about shady men in suits accosting young boys with sketchy offers of free candy.

He won’t call. There has to be another way.

…

Turns out there isn’t.

Stiles hits rock bottom and dials the number, creepy businessman notwithstanding.

The offer still sounds sketchy, but who hasn’t thought about becoming a real superhero?

...

_“This is how it’s going to work. Adrenaline acts as a catalyst for the serum, so we’re going to have to make you suffer. If you’re lucky, your mutant gene will activate and manifest in a spectacular fashion. If not? Well, we’ll have to keep hurting you…”_

…

Should’ve known there’d be razorblades in that candy.

…

There’s blood in his teeth when Stiles grins.

“I’ve gotten worse from a geriatric.”

Mr. Clean grins back and jams a taser in Stiles’s gut.

…

“You drank the Kool-Aid, too?” a voice rasps from somewhere behind him.

Stiles twitches in his restraints.

“M’not...here...for their...bedside...manner,” Stiles grits out, voice high and reedy.

“Should've used TripAdvisor,” the man offers sagely.

“Gonna...leave...such a...bad...review,” Stiles huffs.

Stiles listens to the creak of the leather restraints from each sharp jerk of his limbs and tries to breathe.

“So, what’re you in for, kid?”

The words echo in his ears. He can’t see the man from this angle, even when he tilts his head back. A series of yellowed, near transparent curtains flutter between them. For all he knows, this chatter is another part of the torture. Get him to spill his secrets and use them against him.

Except, well, they already knew, didn’t they? And for once, his captors didn’t seem keen on cracking him open to rifle through his secrets.

No, they just wanted to break him.

“F-Frontotemporal Dementia,” Stiles confesses, the words heavy on his tongue.

The man hums.

“Bum deal.”

Stiles blinks at the response, sinking into the operating table beneath him.

“What about you?”

“I’m just here for the spandex.”

Stiles huffs out a quiet snort.

“Right.”

“That, and the shitload of cancer doin’ the mambo in my liver, lungs, prostate, and brain,” the man continues with a shallow laugh.

Stiles raises his eyebrows at the black blob of a stain eating into the ceiling above him. Kind of looks like a turtle.

“Wow, who’d you piss off?”

“Too many to count, kid.” The man’s next laugh ends in a rattling cough. “Lately, it’s been our dear warden and his angry sidekick.”

Stiles snorts.

“Can’t believe he named himself after a brand of dish soap.”

“I know, right?” the man crows. “My new handle will be waaay better.”

“Yeah?” Stiles’s lips quirk.

“Get ready because this is a doozy,” the man urges.

Stiles offers a prompting hum.

“Mrs. Doubtfire.”

A sharp laugh falls out of Stiles’s mouth and ignoring his residual twitching comes easier.

...

His name is Wade Wilson and Stiles learns that he submitted himself to Dr. Soap’s tender mercies to “do right” by the woman he loves.

Stiles wishes his reasons were as noble.

“Didn’t want to end up like my mom,” he reveals one night—day—whatever after a few too many dunks in an ice bath. His hair remains slick and slimy where it cuts across his face. He rubs his head against the operating table beneath him, but only succeeds in spreading the strands out further. “She started to forget things. Just little stuff at first. And she’d get these odd looks sometimes. Strange ideas. One day, she decided I was trying to kill her.”

“Were you?” Wade wonders, guileless, and if Stiles had the energy, he’d think more about the kind of upbringing Wade must’ve had.

“Not intentionally. But I was a... hyperactive little bastard.” Stiles quirks his lips. “Still am.” Too many new aches to notice the dull one that admission should’ve brought. “I made her worse.” Stiles shudders out a breath. “Being around me made her worse.”

“Not sure it works like that, kid,” Wade argues, voice steady as always, barring the occasional bout of strangulation. “Besides, it just sounds like you need a better outlet for all that energy. Another hole to plug into. Or, are you more of a socket kinda guy?”

“You coming onto me, Wilson?” Stiles wonders, struggling against the weight of his eyelids. “Don’t know if your fiancé would like that.”

Wade hums, considering.

“Actually, I think she’d be real into it.”

“Oh?” His eyes close.

Wade hums again, but doesn’t elaborate.

“Surprised you’ve thought about it,” Stiles murmurs, licking his dry lips. “You’re always calling me a kid.”

“Maybe I got a daddy fetish.”

“Do you?”

“Nah. Can’t say it really gets my engines revved.” 

Stiles blinks his eyes open again at the edge to Wade’s voice.

“It’s all a moot point anyway.” Stiles sighs. The blob on the ceiling looks like a mutated jellyfish today. “Probably never gonna get laid now.”

“Never, never?”

“The last friend I tried with ended up a virgin sacrifice,” Stiles confesses, blinking at one of the thicker branches of mold.

Wade whistles.

“Damn, kid. That’s harsh.”

“You believe me, then?” Stiles asks, nonplussed.

“I’ve seen a lot of shit,” Wade returns, his shrug audible. “Dumped a bunch of my own, too. Sacrifices don’t rank top five, virgin or otherwise.”

“You know something? Me neither.” Stiles laughs in a shallow crackle. “What’re you rating this?”

Wade hums, considering.

“Four.”

“Four?”

“Right under the White Truffle Macaron Incident™,” Wade intones.

“Got something against chocolate?”

“Just my dick, if I get the chance,” Wade replies, tone deep and husky. “I’d kill for a Snickers right about now.”

“You’re not you when you’re hungry,” Stiles offers, lips quirking.

“You got that right. Those bakery fuckers were lucky I didn’t go full Betty White on them for the shit they pulled.”

“All this over a macaroon?”

“It’s macaron, you philistine,” Wade lectures. 

“Okay,” Stiles drawls out with an eye roll, “sorry some of us took Spanish—”

“Annnnd, for your information, what they did went so beyond the line, I still get nightmares—”

“Worse than sneaking an onion into a batch of caramel apples?” Stiles wonders.

“Yeah—oh shit, that’s,” Wade rasps out a laugh, “I’m definitely gonna use that one day.”

Stiles follows a tendril of mold until it curls into a crack in the ceiling.

One day. Right.

“Be my guest.”

“You got it, Codsworth. So, I took a bite outta this macaron and—you ready? This next part gets a little dark.”

“Don’t think it can get much darker,” Stiles murmurs to the jellyfish, trying to recall when he last felt sunlight.

“You’d be surprised,” Wade murmurs back, solemn.

“I’ll try not to faint.”

“Okay, so I took that bite and it’s, it was like shoving my tongue in a pig’s anus—”

Stiles chokes on his next breath.

“Because it wasn’t white chocolate truffle, it was actual truffle-truffle—that dirty mushroom shit rich douchebags get a boner for.”

Stiles coughs out a laugh, chest heaving. He sucks in a breath and the laughter fades in favor of a coughing fit that wracks his whole frame. The jellyfish stares back into Stiles’s wide eyes and fuck, is that piece of shit mold gonna be the last thing he sees as he chokes to death?

“—kid? Stiles!” Wade calls and Stiles wonders how long Wade has tried to get his attention because loud noises are a serious taboo when Suds McGee and his trusty Scowling Scouring Sponge might be lurking nearby—

“M’fine,” Stiles chokes out, willing the spasms to slow and his lungs to expand properly.

“Jesus, kid.” Wade sighs. “Givin’ a guy a heart attack here.”

“Sorry,” Stiles huffs out through his labored breathing, “guess your story was just too much for me. Truffle oil in a cookie? What a travesty.”

“A true affront to the bakery gods,” Wade agrees, solemn. “They even added chunks of the shit in there. Got all stuck in my teeth.”

“Gross.”

Stiles leans his head back, further exhausted now that his coughing fit has passed. His eyes burn with the strain of keeping them open, his torso falls limp against the operating table.

“So,” Wade drawls out, “what would you rank this?”

“Hmm?”

“Does this shit make your top five?”

Stiles stares at his blob and remembers, remembers the paralytic helplessness of falling prey to the Kanima venom, of watching Matt hurt his dad, of Eichen House, of words falling down the page, a bear trap on his leg, getting dragged screaming by the Nogitsune, of being trapped in his own mind, his own nightmare, unable to wake up, unable to stop himself, watching his own hand slide the sword into Scott’s gut, of killing Allison, of his dad’s face when he didn’t believe him, and when they realized Stiles really was going to waste away just like his mom. 

It’s different, the pain, when it’s happening to someone you care about.

“I’ve been through worse,” is all Stiles says.

Wade must hear something in his tone because, for once, he doesn’t press.

…

“What does it look like today?”

Stiles lies on the operating table as still as he can, each wheeze of breath sending a pulse of pain through his chest and limbs.

“Stiles?” Wade calls.

“Yeah?” Stiles groans out, wincing at the sting of his bottom lip—his price for getting mouthy at Angel.

That, and the Rorschach of bruises on his chest.

“What does it look like today?” Wade repeats.

Stiles blinks up at the ceiling, trying to think over the discordant throb of each bruise.

“Ditto.”

“I wanna be the very best—like no one ever was~” Wade sings and Stiles sinks into the nostalgia of early Saturday mornings with Scott spent trying to guess the silhouette of Pokémon before the end of the commercials.

That’s what these moments talking to Wade feel like sometimes. Commercials scattered throughout Ajax’s show. Moments of camaraderie meant to sell him on hope. A bitter part of Stiles wonders if this is all part of some mind game, too.

“You teach me and I’ll teach you~”

At least Wade has a good singing voice.

…

“Curly fries.”

“Really?”

“What can I say?” Stiles murmurs. “Sometimes it’s the little things you miss most.” 

Stiles stares up at the mold on the ceiling, unable to see anything else in it.

“A hug from my dad.”

Wade is silent long enough for Stiles to assume he has checked out.

“Vanessa…” Wade breathes like a secret. “I wanna see Vanessa…”

Stiles exhales a shuddery breath, grateful for the earnest match of Wade’s answer to his own.

“Oh, lovely,” Ajax comments as he steps passed the tarp around Stiles’s bed with Angel and an unfamiliar man in tow. “I don’t know about anyone else, but I’m touched.”

“Yeah, touched in the head, maybe,” Stiles sneers, the warm feeling in his chest slipping to hot bile in his gut. “Don’t worry, we were just trading recipes. Did I ever tell you I make a mean Molotov cocktail?” Stiles asks, baring his teeth. “I’m sure you’ll get to taste it one day.”

Angel clenches her jaw and stalks closer, pausing when Ajax raises a hand.

“No, no, it’s okay. I encourage distractions, even if they lead to…colorful...outbursts.” Ajax smiles, curling his fingers around Stiles’s exposed feet. Stiles flinches. “Wouldn’t want you giving up on us now, would we?”

“Hey, don’t take any shit from him, Stiles,” Wade calls. Ajax clenches his fingers tighter with a placid smile, his nails biting into Stiles’s skin. “How tough could he be? With a name like Francis...”

Ajax’s hands still and his gaze flicks up. Stiles stares at the expression on his face and wonders how dead his nerves really are.

“Francis?” Stiles repeats.

“That’s his legal name,” Wade snickers.

Ajax and Angel share a look, their customary façade of baseline amusement gone.

“He got Ajax from a dish soap,” Wade cackles.

Ajax—Francis turns and Stiles panics.

“Wade—”

“F-R-A-N-C-I—oops.”

Stiles listens to the lights click on in the “room” behind him, straining against his restraints.

“Snagged the dry-cleaning tag off your lab coat,” Wade explains in a mild tone. “F.Y.I. I could probably get you the superhero discount.”

“You are endlessly annoying,” Francis mutters.

“And an idiot!” Stiles calls.

“Thanks, I’ve never heard that before,” Wade replies and Stiles can hear the grin in his voice.

Angel wheels a cart of equipment closer to Stiles, her lips pursed around her customary matchstick. Stiles’s gaze flicks between her and the unknown man still standing silently just passed the tarp partition. He is tall and thin with dingy brown hair and a scruffy mustache. A denim jacket swallows his torso and his hands are shoved into the pockets of his baggy gray sweats.

“Why don’t you do us all a favor and shut the fuck up,” Francis says to Wade, “or I’ll sew your pretty mouth shut.”

Angel shoves Stiles’s head back onto the operating table and he flinches at the warmth of her calloused hand clasped across his forehead.

“C’mon, is this really necessary?” Stiles complains.

Angel levels him with that same bland look she always wears unless Stiles really riles her up.

“Oh,” Wade murmurs, almost too low for Stiles to hear. “I wouldn’t do that, if I were you. See, the problem with round-the-clock torture is ya can’t really step it up from there.”

Angel pulls the additional leather straps across his chin and forehead with her free hand, buckling him into place against the operating table.

“Is that what you think?” Francis wonders, the challenge clear in his voice.

If Wade offers a witty retort, Stiles fails to hear it under the ominous creak of a gurney.

“Hey!” Stiles strains to hear, to move closer. “What are you—where are you taking him? Wade!”

“Don’t worry, kid,” Wade calls back. “This guy’s bark is way worse than his bite. I mean, you’ve smelled his breath, right?” His voice starts to grow distant. “For a guy who named himself after soap, you’d think he’d have better hygiene!”

Angel remains tight-lipped as ever, and Stiles watches her turn and leave his curtained space, catching the direction she takes in the corner of his left eye.

Left—toward Wade. Fuck.

Stiles’s gaze flicks forward as the man in his “room” peers at Stiles with a caricature of a smile.

“Hey, Nurse Ratched!” Stiles yells, eyeing the creep currently giving off major child molester vibes. “I think you forgot something!”

“Back up—weekend?” Wade squawks.

Stiles jerks at the distant sound of Wade’s voice, trying to tilt his head back against the straps of leather holding him in place.

“I’d be less worried about that guy and more worried about yourself,” the man in his room comments, wedging a pinky in his ear.

Whatever biting comment Stiles might’ve thrown back is lost when Wade starts screaming.

All he can see is Eichen House, a faceless man restrained in Malia’s place, and Francis pressing Oliver’s power drill into Wade’s temple.

Except this time there isn’t anyone to bargain with.

Stiles grits his teeth and stares at his moldy ceiling with watery eyes, listening to Wade choke and gasp and scream. 

“Now,” Francis announces as he pushes passed the tarp with Angel once more, “it has been brought to my attention that you might’ve grown numb to some of our traditional methods. Well,” Francis jerks his head toward the other man, who steps forward, “I am nothing if not adaptable.”

“What are you doing to Wade?” Stiles grits out.

“Stepping it up.” Francis’s grin is full of teeth. “Stiles, I would like you to meet a former patient of mine, Earwig.”

“A pleasure,” Earwig offers with a peculiar twist to his mouth, his pinky still twisting in his ear.

“What is it with you guys and the crappy codenames?” Stiles wonders. “And you—get a Q-tip!”

“You and Wilson are just full of colorful commentary,” Francis says in his usual placid tone. “I normally prefer to stick to more physical methods, but for you, I’ve decided to make an exception. Let’s see what you have to say after a session with him.”

Earwig steps up to the right side of his bed and Stiles watches in horror as he pulls his pinky out and a centipede-like insect comes right along with it.

_“Whaa-at the fuck is that?”_

Stiles tries to flinch back, but the head straps keep him in place. All he can do is stare in his peripheral vision as Earwig brings the strange insect closer to his ear.

“No no no no wait, just—”

A horrible crunching noise and then his vision goes white.

_And he burns._

…

“Scott?” Stiles breathes into his phone. “Scott, please, I—I don’t know where I am—”

Something moves in the dark. The chains on the bear trap rattle when he flinches.

“There’s something here. I don’t…”

“I have no life, but I can die. What am I?” Stiles asks.

Stiles stares up into his own face and screams.

…

Stiles has no concept of how much time passes before Earwig removes the _thing_ from his ear for another so-called break. His body spasms in his restraints, his left leg limp as if still caught in that bear trap and his shoulder twitching up in an effort to rub away the _crunch_ he can still hear. Due to this, it takes a few minutes for him to realize that he can’t hear Wade’s screaming anymore.

“Wade?” Stiles rasps. He tries to moisten his lips, but his tongue catches on dried skin.

“You know, I’ve seen some weird side effects before,” Francis comments from the direction of Wade’s room. “I could cure them...but what’s the fun in that?”

Stiles waits for the usual snarky rebuttal from Wade. It never comes.

“Now I’m gonna shut you in again, Wade. Not because I need to…”

Whatever else Francis says is too quiet for Stiles to hear. Wade still says nothing.

“Wade!” Stiles yells this time, ignoring the way his throat burns. “Don’t tell me you’re letting _Francis_ get to you. What—did you inhale some of his bad breath?”

Stiles can feel the way even Earwig flinches at that, seeming to shrink away from him where he sits on a plastic chair in the corner.

“Looks like your cheerleader still has a mouth on him. Still nothing to say?” Francis hums in response to Wade’s continued silence. Stiles clenches his fists. “In that case—Earwig! Time to cut this break short.”

Stiles flinches back as Earwig steps up to his bed once again, wedging his pinky into his ear to retrieve the weird centipede. The insect curls up toward Earwig’s fingers when he pulls it out and Stiles shudders, but bites back any of the pleas he might’ve garbled out for himself.

“C’mon, Wade! Say something! _Anything!_ ” The restraints squeak as Stiles jerks in them, wide eyes watching Earwig bring the insect closer. “Don’t let this asshole—”

The thing carves its way back into Stiles’s eardrum and the white-hot pain burns away whatever he might’ve said next along with everything else.

…

“I have no life, but I can die. What am I?” Stiles demands.

Stiles claws fists into his hair and screams.

“I hAVe nO liFE, BUt I cAN DiE.”

“What am I, Stiles?”

“I have no life, but I can die. I have no life, but I can die. I have no life, but I can die. I have no life, but I can die. I have no life, but I can die. I have no life, but I can die. I have no life, but I can die. I have no life, but I can die. I have no life, but I can die. I have no life, but I can die. I have no life, but I can die. I have no life, but you can die. I have no life, but I can die. I have no life, but I can die. I have no life, but you can die. I have no life, but you can die. I have no life, but you can die. You have no life, but you can die. I have no life, but you can die. I have no life, but you can die. I have no life, but you can die. I have no life, but you can die. I have no life, but you can die. You have no life, but you can die.”

“What are you, Stiles?”

…

The tendons in Stiles’s neck grow taut as he gasps to awareness with a horrible yell, straining against the leather cutting into his chin, forehead and torso. Curses spew from his mouth and he directs all the vitriol in his soul toward verbally tearing into Angel as she stands beside his slab, glaring down at him from over the matchstick between her lips.

Angel’s fist snaps forward and Stiles hears something crack before he passes out.

…

A shrill voice filters into Stiles ears as awareness returns and he struggles to breathe, the face straps biting into his skin.

“How hard did you hit him?” the voice demands.

“Not enough to do that,” Angel murmurs.

Stiles’s eyes flutter open to a different room with off-white walls and the kind of sterility he associates with hospitals. Angel and a woman with close-cropped hair that edges from blonde to gray stand at the end of his bed, frowning at each other.

“Well his broken rib and punctured lung beg to differ,” the woman sneers.

Angel rolls her eyes, but keeps her arms folded in her customary “relaxed” state. The matchstick between her lips is gone.

The woman scoffs at Angel before striding over to the left side of Stiles’s bed. He flinches when she reaches for him, but her hand is steady as she presses her palm to his forehead. His eyes roll back into his head as the woman’s touch sends his insides alight and he burns burns _burns_.

…

“We have no life, but we can die. What are we?” a Stiles asks.

Stiles stares at the Stiles sitting across from him and wets his lips.

“A flame?”

The other Stiles laughs and laughs, a distant cracking underneath the sound.

…

Stiles blinks at the ceiling, frowning at the smooth white tiles. The silence makes his ears crunch. Or maybe Earwig left something behind.

No one has entered his room since the woman with close-cropped hair left. Her explanation of his wounds and her treatment to him had seemed more habit than anything, a leftover from working in a real hospital. He doubts she would have been so informative had Francis or Angel been there. Francis only offers details when knowing more adds to the torment, whereas Angel seems ill-inclined to do anything to disturb the matchstick between her teeth.

His thoughts churn slow over the woman with close-cropped hair, his “doctor.” Learning her mutation allows her to heal most ailments with a touch should’ve been fascinating, but Stiles mostly feels sick over the waste. She could help so many people, but instead she’s here to wipe the slate clean whenever Francis or Angel get overzealous in their torture sessions.

Whatever that doctor did leaves Stiles more drained than when he emerged out of a pile of bandages, a shade of himself. They’ve left his head unstrapped for once, but this doesn’t change anything. He can barely move. A glance to either side reveals a pointed lack of a nurse call button—not that he’s naive enough to think that any of the other staff here have a better disposition than Angel. His next breath creaks in memory.

…

Stiles jerks awake when Francis bursts into the room, covered in soot and wounds. He opens his mouth, uncertain what he means to say, when Francis darts to his bedside and clasps something around his neck with more speed than his sluggish mind can track.

“I’ve had enough of that smart mouth.”

Francis speaks with a cold finality that might’ve made Stiles shiver if not for the exhaustion.

“Now you’re going to listen.”

Francis waits. 

Stiles can’t get his lips to part. His hands jerk in his restraints.

Francis quirks his lips into a facsimile of his usual smug, knowing smile. There’s something behind it, something too sharp to call it as empty as the others.

“Earwig was able to elevate your stress levels high enough to trigger a rather strong mutation. Contact with your skin delivers a potent boost to the mutated cells of others. It’s fascinating, really,” Francis comments in a bland tone. “You’re lucky that Angel only gave you a minor tap or you might’ve ended up a splatter across the table.” 

_Why can’t Stiles open his mouth?_

“Your cells even allowed Dr. Emma to cure your dementia.”

Stiles blinks.

“With a mutation like yours, we’ll be able to fetch enough to more than cover what Wade cost us.” Francis’s smile becomes all teeth when he sees Stiles’s eyes widen. “That’s right, you don’t know. Your buddy died impaled on a pole in a fire of his own making.”

Stiles flicks his gaze across Francis, the blood on his face, the soot coating his skin and clothes, and he wants to scream. He settles for jerking his hands again, his legs, anything and everything else he can move because it can’t end like this—it _can’t_.

“Stop struggling, Stiles.”

Francis speaks in a calm, steady tone that makes Stiles fall lax before he can even register the command.

“Now,” Francis murmurs, something seeming to have settled inside him as he clasps Stiles’s foot in a mirror of their last conversation. Stiles feels a strange wave of near feverish heat and watches all of the expression fall off of Francis’s face. The sight sends nausea rolling in his stomach. “What’s my name?”

Stiles doesn’t react outwardly because he can’t.

Francis breathes deep, savoring the silence.

…

“You aren’t alive, but can die. What are you, Stiles?”

Stiles stares back at himself, expression blank.

“A battery.”

The other Stiles grins a brittle, self-deprecating smile.

…

…

Stiles meets Sarah on a clear day.

Two grassy fields bracket the narrow dirt road his guards park on. The doors up front slam and his gaze fixes on the horizon framed by the windshield where the road veers off. He knows miles of grassland extend beyond even that.

The door to the back of the van opens and one of his guards clasps a meaty palm around his upper arm. His body follows the pull outward and he listens to the crunch of dirt under his sneakers.

He can’t see his sneakers from this angle, but he can see her boots—muddy and scuffed and at odds with her navy pantsuit, all pressed lines apart from the pant legs shoved into leather. Even her hair seems out place with her blonde curls pinned back with plastic butterfly clips. Gold bracelets slip down her left wrist as she raises a Starbucks cup to her pink lips.

Stiles feels saliva pool in his mouth as he inhales the aroma. He works on swallowing.

The woman hums, brown eyes surveying Stiles over the lid of her coffee cup.

“He isn’t very lively,” she comments, tilting her head.

The short but bulky guard shuffles forward.

“I vetted the whole thing, Miss Sarah,” the guard offers, earnest. “Success is guaranteed.”

“Guaranteed, huh?” Sarah murmurs.

Stiles feels her gaze settle on the metal band around his neck.

“Daniel—hold this.”

The short and bulky guard takes the proffered coffee cup with eager hands. 

Sarah pushes up the sleeve of Stiles’s sweatshirt and clasps his wrist, her touch causing the usual wave of feverish heat to spill into his veins. Her knees buckle a little from the power and Daniel almost lurches forward, until she shoots her other hand out and drags roots up from the ground with ease.

“Good work, Daniel,” Sarah praises with a grin that highlights the laugh lines on her face.

Daniel offers a small smile of his own, near glowing.

“Thank you, Miss Sarah.”

Stiles stares at the undulating roots with dull eyes.

…

Stiles stands in the dim hallway, feet anchored in place to the left of a door. Beyond the door, a group of individuals sit around a wooden table, bartering the usual commodities of guns, drugs, and unlucky people, some of their words filtering through the cracks as negotiations grow heated.

A part of Stiles yearns to press his ear to the door, but his back remains straight, his gaze riveted to the opposite wall. The usual regret for information lost rings dull, that eagerness muted under the weight of meetings past.

Stiles notes his most viable exit points: the vents above him, the window four feet to his left. The vent offers a quiet escape with little fanfare, as long as he refrains from drawing attention. Taking the window provides a certain flair, best saved for extreme artillery or fire.

Stiles stares into the wall across from him, far too aware of the pointlessness of marking that vent, that window, far too aware of the fact that he could take his last breath this way, flames licking up his calves as smoke clogs his lungs and he just stares, just stares the way he just stared when those fuckers behind the door dropped a collared nine year old mutant like him on the table two feet in front of him and started placing their bids.

"Fuck," Stiles hisses.

Except that he doesn't. The word doesn't form on his lips, doesn't shift the glorified muzzle across his mouth.

Instead, he just stands and breathes and stares. 

As directed.

**Author's Note:**

> I've been working on this on and off for the last two years. I expect there to be two more Acts, but as always—motivation, energy, and time pending. If you enjoyed this, please let me know.


End file.
